It’s main assets are privacy and scalability. Most people don’t care about minimalism: https://twitter.com/DavidBurkett38/status/1303106005056851971
I can certainly say this is the first time I’ve ever seen lightning network touted as an example of good usability.
So I guess a clean security model is not such an integral part of Grin’s appeal?
How much time have you spent supporting grin users? I’ve personally spent hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours helping people try to use grin. I know a thing or two about how new users think about transacting. To most users, there is nothing “uniform” about this approach.
How are we supposed to explain to users that receiving from another grin user is different than receiving from an exchange? What happens when some exchanges support RSR, but some support SRS? What about stores - should they use RSR and SRS? How are service providers supposed to decide whether they qualify for exchange-style RSR, or normal style SRS?
Also, why have we given up on trying to support sending via tor? I thought the beauty of slatepacks was the ability to support synchronous in most cases, but fall back to asynch if the receiver is unreachable? Why are we no longer recommending that? Why is it that we continue to make recommendations that make things harder for our users?
True. Just look how many API and slate versions we’ve implemented!
There’s limited manpower because we launched with possibly the least usable cryptocurrency ever, so the hype died almost immediately and everyone bailed.
You can support both itx and nitx. We can do everything in our power to discourage people from using nitx unless absolutely necessary, including trying first to contact the receiver via tor to build transactions interactively, limiting the number of nitx per block, charging additional fees, showing big warnings, etc. There are plenty of ways we could compromise to get what we both want. But compromise never appears to be an option.
So do I, by making sure we actually stay relevant enough to survive decades.
I didn’t say we will never accomplish anything because we have interactive transactions. I said we will never accomplish anything when one side refuses to search for reasonable compromises. It’s always minimalism or death, and sadly it’s starting to seem like Grin might end up with the latter.
I’m not going to continue these discussions. This coin was once the pinnacle of innovation, and you could just feel everyone’s enthusiasm when discussing new, cutting-edge ways to push mimblewimble to its limits. We used to discuss using BLS to possibly support aggregating kernels or one-sided txs (a much more complex consensus change), and Igno himself was very interested in it as well. We discussed finding alternative accumulators for a constant-sized replacement of MMRs. We were always on the lookout for ways to improve Grin’s privacy or scalability even further. Not all of the ideas were good, but we were at least trying to push the technology forward so we can remain relevant.
But then we launched, hype died, Igno left, and history was rewritten by a small group of minimalists whose one desire seemed to be creating the most simplistic consensus model out there, regardless of its impact on practical usage. Now, it’s not even worth the effort to propose new ideas, because it would be too exhausting and fruitless to try to fight the inevitable political battle that will result. We’ve become so good at minimalism that even our dev community is minimal, with near-silent dev channels outside of our weekly meetings. The dwindling dev community and shrinking userbase should’ve been enough for most people to stop and consider that maybe, just maybe, we aren’t on the right path.
